Peaking at the Right Time
One of the important parts of any effort is to hit your peak at the right time. In sports, teams want to peak as the playoffs begin. In politics, a campaign wants to peak as voters begin to cast ballots.
Peaking too early is obviously the kiss of death for a candidate. That’s why you don’t hear phrases like “President Scott Walker” or “President Michelle Bachman”. Much of this is also tied to hype and the expectations game; if a candidate overperforms or underperforms expectations, it has a huge effect.
Polls are not terribly reliable, but sometimes they do quantify what one senses about a campaign or a candidate. For me, that’s the case with the Des Moines Register-Mediacom-NBC News-Your Name Here Iowa Poll released yesterday.
Clearly, Trump still holds a big lead, and his numbers are quite stable. He’s at 43 percent support now, compared with 42 percent in August.
Absent some major event, the race continues to be for second in the hopes that other candidates will drop out and coalesce behind a single Trump challenger. But that’s where things are interesting…and where the “peaking too soon” concept comes into play.
DeSantis scored 35 percent in the August poll, only 7 points behind Trump…and that was big news at the time, the narrowness of the gap.
No more; DeSantis has lost more than half his support, down to 16 percent. Not only does he now have well less than half of Trump’s support…he shares the second place spot with Haley, who saw her numbers grow from 6 percent two months ago to 16 percent now.
No other candidate is in double figures…bad news for Ramaswamy, who when the first poll was taken was on the upswing into the top tier.
Obviously, the news is devastating for DeSantis. Even if the first poll showed him a little high, and the new poll shows him a little low…that’s still a big drop.
The question is if Haley can hold her newfound support and grow it…or if, after another couple of months, she falters and someone else shows a spike. That often happens here in Iowa…candidates briefly catch fire and then fade.
The poll also shows that Trump supporters are solidly behind him, while supporters of other candidates say they could move. That’s the key in peaking too soon…since January 15 is still 76 days away.
